There is a house no one talks about anymore—not out of fear, but out of that other kind of forgetting…
That would make it real.
But out of that deeper kind of forgetting.
The kind inherited.
The kind practiced like prayer.
Latchford Lane. End of the row. Where the gravel turns to dirt and the streetlights don’t work. The house is still there, though you wouldn’t notice it unless you were looking. It doesn’t sit on the road so much as beside it —like it’s stepped back, listening. And what it’s listening to doesn’t come from the road—but from beneath.
Some call it a crack house, others a demon den were horrible deeds transpired.
Urban explorers have posted grainy footage online in the early 2000s—teens with handheld cameras giggling into static, daring each other to knock. Most videos end the same way: corrupted files, sudden blackouts, strange audio—breathing, reversed speech, the sound of footsteps descending. One clip, titled 44Below, circulated briefly on dark forums. It showed a door creaking open on its own and the cameraman whispering, ‘I think it's listening.’ That file was taken down. Not flagged. Not removed by the uploader. Just…absent. Like the others.
Despite numerous tragedies, the house was never officially declared unsafe.
Yet something worse happened there.
The Delmond family.
Five people went in.
Two came out.
Not at the same time.
Not the same.
The official record says the Delmonds moved into 44 Latchford Lane in April of 1973. A family of five: husband, wife, and three daughters. They weren’t wealthy. The property had been on the market for years. Cheap. Deceptively well-kept. But it had been vacant for nearly a decade before they arrived.
Neighbors remember the house being too quiet. The kind of quiet that pulls at the edges of attention. Curtains drawn at all hours.
No music. No television.
Just a silence thick enough to record footsteps.
Always downward. Never echoing back up.
Some neighbors claimed they heard the stairs at night from their own homes. The sound of someone descending. But the direction felt wrong—as if the sound was traveling upward through the dirt.
Within the first week, the eldest daughter was pulled from school. The mother told the office she was “unwell.” No explanation was ever offered.
The youngest, Celia, began to behave strangely. The mailman reported seeing her outside around 3:00 AM, barefoot, walking slow, careful circles in the front yard. Her eyes were open but unfocused. She was whispering.
Counting.
Her steps formed a shape.
A loop. A ward. Or a summoning.
Every few steps, she would pause and turn toward the house. Toward the front steps.
She never reached ten.
Mrs Hodges, a neighbor once said that on the ninth circle, her eyes would roll upward. Not back—up. As if she were tracking something descending toward her. Once, a neighbor claimed to see a shadow reach out from the front steps toward her hand. It retreated when she turned her head. But the grass where the shape touched never grew back.
The neighbors said she always paused after the ninth turn.
Like something was listening for her to say the last number.
Another investigator later noted that the path Celia traced mirrored the burned geometry in the basement—down to the curve of the looped edge around the pentagram. As if she had seen it before. As if someone was teaching her from below.
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
There are no photographs of the inside of the home. The original real estate listing claimed it had two staircases: one leading upstairs, and another at the back of the house—a narrow, enclosed set of steps behind the kitchen that descended to a windowless basement.
That basement is a point of contention.
Some claim it never existed. Others insist it should not have.
Both surviving family members, years apart, unaware of each other’s testimony, described the same thing:
“The second staircase didn’t always go to the same place.”
Sometimes it led to the basement.
Sometimes it led to a hallway that should not exist.
Once, it led to more stairs.
But only one survivor remembers that.
One survivor from the 1980’s swore it led to a red-lit hallway where crucifixes hung upside down. Another said it opened into a perfect copy of the house’s living room—but with all the furniture facing the basement door.
Planning records show the house was built in 1899 by Bishop Lior van Brecht, an exiled religious figure from Europe. He had no parish, no congregation. He belonged to an obscure sect known only in fragmented Vatican records as Domus Inversa.
They were excommunicated in 1887 for theological inversion, spatial heresy, and ritual distortion of sacred architecture. According to suppressed accounts, they believed that properly constructed geometry could host “a counter-divine intelligence,” a voice from below.
Some scholars of spatial heresy believe the 13x13 concrete basement chamber was not added, but constructed first—the house above merely a shell to legitimize the true structure below. A sanctum for inversion. Or perhaps a waiting room.
Van Brecht vanished in 1903. The three owners after him disappeared as well.
Each time, the back stairwell was found marred with scratches—not on the steps themselves, but the undersides. As if something had been climbing upward. And each time, a mirror was found at the base of the stairs.
Always cracked.
Always cold to the touch.
Even years later.
The mirror was not hung. It had no backing.
It didn’t reflect the room.
Only the person standing in the doorway.
And only if they were alone.
In 2011, a local ghost-hunting group called The Hollow Seekers broke into the house to livestream a séance.
Only one segment remains accessible—a 12-minute clip where one member stares into the cracked mirror. She begins to speak in Latin, then laughs in a voice not her own. The mirror, reportedly non-reflective, begins showing flickers of movement behind her—shapes where there should be none.
Her friends begin screaming off-camera. The feed cuts out.
None were ever found.
When investigators eventually breached the sealed basement years later, they found it preserved: A 13x13-foot concrete sanctum, weathered but intact, lay buried beneath the house like a forgotten chapel turned inside out. The walls were not flat, but curved in slight arches—four alcoves, one per wall, each recessed deeply like confessionals. Long-dead candle stubs sat in each, melted to the stone. The floor bore an inverted pentagram seared into the concrete, surrounded by a ring of backward Latin: Gradibus numeratis, oratio completur.
“With steps counted, the prayer completes.”
What lay beneath the pentagram was worse. Six shallow, body-shaped troughs carved into the concrete formed a starburst pattern, as if awaiting occupants. The scent of old ash and damp mortar lingered.
At the middle of the staircase near the fifth step, stood a mirror. Not mounted, not hanging—simply present. It leaned but did not rest. It reflected only the viewer, never the room, and only if they stood in the doorway.
Some believe this chamber was a summoning site. Others believe it was built to house something already present. A vessel. Or a vestibule.
In 1973, Celia Delmond was found standing at the top of the basement stairs. Eyes wide. Lips moving.
She was whispering a name no one could later remember. Not even her mother.
When asked years later, the mother said: “It was not a real name. It was…a sound pretending to be a name.”
The disappearances began six days later.
First the father. Then the two elder daughters.
Celia vanished last. She left behind a single red shoe, perfectly placed on the third step of the basement stairs.
The same step where the counting always stopped.
The mother was found sitting upright in the living room. Her hands were bound in front of her with rosary beads. Her mouth was sewn shut with black thread.
She was alive. And smiling.
When the thread was cut and she was asked what had happened, she said: “He walks better when the lights are off.”
Her smile didn’t look pained. It looked practiced.
When she was asked who “he” was, she answered: “The one who taught me how to kneel. Not like the others. Lower.”
The thread was later analyzed. It wasn’t cotton or synthetic.
It was hair.
Human. Braided and dyed black. The knots were tied in repeating loops of five and thirteen. Each knot pierced not only skin but gum, cheek muscle, tongue. It would have taken hours.
There was no blood.
The house was never officially closed. It was simply avoided.
But the door remains locked. The mirrors inside, when glimpsed through broken panes, are always spotless.
Children still dare each other to approach it. Some say if you press your ear to the siding, especially near the back steps, you can hear the stairs.
One step. Then another.
Only down.
Unless you say the name that isn’t a name.
Then you’ll hear the next step—behind you.
Maybe on the third.
Maybe in your own home.
- [Varron’s Note]:
As stated previously, the house was never officially condemned. It was simply…avoided.
But the door remains locked. The windows always reflect too cleanly. And the mirrors inside—when glimpsed through broken panes—are always spotless.
Untouched. Waiting.
Children still dare each other to approach it on Halloween. Some say if you press your ear to the siding near the back stairwell, you can hear the stairs:
One step.
Then another.
Only down.
But the bravest—or the dumbest—try to knock.
Locals say:
Never knock twice.
The first knock announces you.
The second is an invitation.
And if you hear a third knock…
It isn’t coming from the outside anymore.